Roundup: Historians' Take

Source: Salon
July 18, 2006

Juan Cole: Israel's Maximal Option

... Israel has a range of options. It has already made one raid into the south. It could pull back at any point. But the maximal option would be to change the human geography and military posture of the Lebanese south. The next stage could be a calibrated Israeli incursion into the south, reminiscent of its Operation Litani in 1978. Israeli Maj. Gen. Uzi Adam told reporters at a news conference of his advice to Lebanese in the south: "We recommend that they leave their villages and homes an

Source: LAT
July 20, 2006

Daniel Pipes:  Israel has a war to win

[Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, will be the William E. Simon distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University in 2007.] A leading Israeli philosopher some years back referred to his countrymen as"an exhausted people, confused and without direction." Before he became prime minister, Ehud Olmert publicly declared these extraordinary words:"We

Source: New Republic
July 17, 2006

Michael B. Oren: Why Israel should bomb Syria

[Michael B. Oren is a senior fellow at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem and the author most recently of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press).] Nearly 40 years ago, Israel and the Arab world fought a war that altered the course of Middle Eastern history. Now, as the region teeters on the brink of a new and potentially more violent cataclysm, it is important to revisit the lessons of the Six Day War, a conflict that few Middle Eastern co

Source: Foreign Policy Research Institute
July 18, 2006

Harvey Glickman: The Darfur Crisis

[Harvey Glickman is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Haverford College and an FPRI associate scholar. His current interests cover the politics of genocide and American foreign policy. His books include Ethnic Conflict and Democratization in Africa (African Studies Association, 1995). He thanks Peter Ajak and Emma Rodman for their comments on early drafts of this article.] What do George Clooney, Manute Bol, Elie Wiesel, and Olympic speed skater Joey Cheek have in common? T

Source: TomDispatch.com
July 18, 2006

Michael T. Klare: An Imperial Defeatist -- And Proud of It

[Michael T. Klare is the Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books) as well as Resource Wars, The New Landscape of Global Conflict.] Just recently, I was accused by a wri

Source: WSJ
July 18, 2006

Fania Oz-Salzberger: Hezbollah and Pericles

[Ms. Oz-Salzberger is a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa.] ... First and most crucial, a majority of Israelis consider this sad unleashing of Israeli firepower in Gaza and Lebanon to be, up to now, a just war. It has both a casus belli and a convincing rationale. Hostilities were initiated by militias strongly associated with the elected governments in both regions, targeting IDF personnel strictly on the Israeli side of the border. Since many media consumers have short me

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
July 18, 2006

Ted Steinberg: Why Deregulation Is to Blame in part for Katrina and Other Natural Disasters

[Ted Steinberg is a professor of history and law at Case Western Reserve University. Among his books are Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Oxford University Press, 2000) and American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn (W.W. Norton & Company, 2006).] ... To date the Katrina disaster has been presented in the news media as primarily a textbook example of failed Republican politics. If only President Bush had left the Federal Emergency

Source: TomDispatch.com
July 17, 2006

Tom Engelhardt: The Middle East Aflame and the Bush Administration Adrift

[Mr. Engelhardt is the author of The End of Victory Culture and co-editor of History Wars, the Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past.] So, as the world spins on a dime, where exactly are we? As a man who is no fan of fundamentalists of any sort, let me offer a proposition that might make some modest sense of o

Source: Oxford University Press Blog: An exchange arranged by Oxford in conjuunction with the publication of Saul Cornell's A Well-Regulated Militia (The July HNN Book of the Month)
July 17, 2006

Mark Tushnet & Saul Cornell: The Second Amendment & Gun Control ... An Email Dialogue

[Mark Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a position he assumed in 2006 after teaching at Georgetown University Law Center for twenty-five years. Saul Cornell is Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University and Director of the Second Amendment Research Cent

Source: Remarks for High School Students in The History Makers Program
July 17, 2006

Mark Naison: Advice for Hip Hoppers

[Dr. Naison is Professor of History and African American Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of Communists in Harlem During the Great Depression, White Boy: A Memoir, co-editor of The Tenant Movement in New York City, and over 100 articles on African American politics, social movements and American culture and sports. Dr. Naison is the Principal Investigator of the Bronx African American History Project.] One of the most popular phrases in hip hop culture is “keeping it

Source: Sightings, the newsletter of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
July 17, 2006

Martin Marty: When the Wealthy Give Billions

[Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com <http://www.illuminos.com> .] Religious commentators have had much to say (as well they should) over the recent philanthropic moves of Warren Buffett and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Among the critics, one offers theological and logical emphases that b

Source: National Review Online
July 14, 2006

Victor Davis Hanson: Has Bush or the World Changed?

There is as much relief from realists as there is disappointment from neo-Wilsonians over a perceived change in U.S. foreign policy — what Time magazine clumsily dubbed “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy.” It is true that there is now a regrettable new quietism about promoting democracy in the Middle East . And the United States also insists on multiparty talks with the ghoulish regimes in North Korea and Iran , in a fashion that purportedly seems much different from the go-it-alone caricature of 2001

Source: Harper's
July 14, 2006

Kevin Baker: Stabbed in the Back!

Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsib

Source: NY Sun
July 11, 2006

Daniel Pipes: Trouble in Londonistan

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] The London transport bombings of July 2005 prompted no less than eight surveys of Muslim opinion in the United Kingdom within the year. When added to two surveys from 2004, they provide in the aggregate a unique insight into

Source: New Republic
July 10, 2006

Benny Morris: The Future of Hamas

In a way, the world's Islamist movements are frank and honest. They wish, and they say that they wish, to install theocratic rule and promote the dominance of Muslim religious mores, ridding their world of any hint of that cluster of secular, democratic, and liberal values that Western civilization has progressively adopted over the past four or five centuries. No guile there. But on another level, these movements, at least in their contemporary Middle Eastern efflorescence, are

Source: National Review Online
July 7, 2006

Victor Davis Hanson: The Subtexts of War

Throughout this war there are various truths generally recognized, but rarely voiced. First, before 9/11 the Western hard right-wing allowed radical Islam a pass — and then afterwards the Left did worse. That fact helps to explain the strange exemption given radical Islam in the West even today. In the 1980s some conservatives saw the jihadists in Afghanistan or the Wahhabis in the Gulf as valuable bulwarks against global Communism. On the Western domestic front, even e

Source: Slate
July 7, 2006

Rodger Citron: John Roberts' marked, and positive, influence on the Supreme Court

Every year, immediately after the Supreme Court term ends, the politics of law briefly becomes our national obsession. This year, inevitably, the pundits' focus was on just how far to the right the court had shifted as a result of the arrivals of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. The verdict: Not that much, according to Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times. Charles Lane of the Washington Post concurred in this judgment. As did Dahlia Lithwick of Slate. According to this anal

Source: NYT
July 8, 2006

Greg Grandin: How to be a good neighbor to Mexico

[Greg Grandin, a professor of history at New York University, is the author of "Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism."] THE Aztecs used to believe that history is not linear but circular, with great events repeating themselves on a regular basis. That certainly seems to be the case with Mexico, which has a revolution once every hundred years. In 1810, peasants thrown off their land by plantation owners led a v

Source: NYT
July 7, 2006

Bruce Cumings and Meredith Jung-En Woo: What Does North Korea Want?

[Bruce Cumings is a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Meredith Jung-En Woo is a professor of political science at the University of Michigan.] NORTH Korea's July 4 fireworks display had a desperate quality to it, even by the standards of a regime that specializes in self-defeating provocation. Whatever the original purpose may have been, it took exactly 42 seconds for this spectacle to backfire as the first stage of the long-range Taepodong 2 missile e

December 31, 2069

Ira Chernus: Karl Rove's Scheherazade Strategy

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of the forthcoming book Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. He can be contacted at chernus@colorado.edu Karl Rove has a simple rule, they say: When you are falling behind, attack your opponents at their strongest point. In the upcoming election, the Democrats' strongest point s